Thanks for clearing that last question up for me!
I started raiding as ret in a casual 10 man guild recently (2 weeks ago) and so far it has been a pretty fun spec to play, even though I somehow feel like it's not top DPS material. I've done quite a bit of research on how to maximize my damage already but I would still like to ask a few beginner questions from the people following this thread:

1. How do you keep track of Inquisition buff? Even though I try to keep an eye on it most of the time it still sometimes falls off for a few seconds and I can usually manage only about 88 - 92% uptime. Currently I'm just checking it from ElvUI buff bars and I guess that it just isn't enough for me.

2. Is Divine Purpose way worse than SW/HA? I see people compare the latter two a lot but DP is hardly ever mentioned.

On a simple patchwerk fight, DP is pretty close to the others, but it doesn't particularly shine in any scenario. I could imagine a case where it would be good, where you need to do a certain amount of damage every (lets say) 30 seconds. You might do less damage overall but if that damage needs to be done spread out, DP would be the way to go. Can't think of a fight where this is the case though, just making a point. SW and HA are slightly better anyway, and shine in several scenarios, making them an easy pick for most rets.

I track inquisition with weakauras and am actually pretty happy with how I do it (I'm an aesthetic perfectionist). Take a look at this video and watch the yellow bar in the middle. Make sure you watch when it falls off. Its a bit complicated to put into words honestly which is why I'd rather you just watch it. If that's something you think you can work with, I'll post the strings here.

Oh and I don't keep 100% inq uptime - there are plenty of cases where its better to have it fall off for a couple seconds than to refresh early, not worth explaining the logic behind it, but the point is 92% isnt that bad. I only had 96.5% on durumu this week which is a nearly perfect melee uptime single target fight. That's one of the reasons I switched away from CLC btw, because the logic for NOT reapplying inq is a little too complicated for the addon.

That's one of the reasons I switched away from CLC btw, because the logic for NOT reapplying inq is a little too complicated for the addon.

But you still can make decisions on the spot, like "Inq is at 2 sec, yes, reapply Inq" or "Inq is at 5 sec, having 5HP or under HA, no, don't reapply Inq now, even if Clc says so"..
I still use clcret (not clcinfo) and still use Power Auras Classic with a counters (not bars) for Inq, GoAK (so damn useful in Cata) etc. It would take waay too much time to rearrange everything in clcinfo (and the ret pack in the clcinfo is just so god damn overkill and ugly for my taste) or Weak Auras (who the hell can understand that hash-like import string??)..

On a simple patchwerk fight, DP is pretty close to the others, but it doesn't particularly shine in any scenario. I could imagine a case where it would be good, where you need to do a certain amount of damage every (lets say) 30 seconds. You might do less damage overall but if that damage needs to be done spread out, DP would be the way to go. Can't think of a fight where this is the case though, just making a point. SW and HA are slightly better anyway, and shine in several scenarios, making them an easy pick for most rets.

I track inquisition with weakauras and am actually pretty happy with how I do it (I'm an aesthetic perfectionist). Take a look at this video and watch the yellow bar in the middle. Make sure you watch when it falls off. Its a bit complicated to put into words honestly which is why I'd rather you just watch it. If that's something you think you can work with, I'll post the strings here.

Oh and I don't keep 100% inq uptime - there are plenty of cases where its better to have it fall off for a couple seconds than to refresh early, not worth explaining the logic behind it, but the point is 92% isnt that bad. I only had 96.5% on durumu this week which is a nearly perfect melee uptime single target fight. That's one of the reasons I switched away from CLC btw, because the logic for NOT reapplying inq is a little too complicated for the addon.

That actually looks very nice and I like it a lot more than my current setup. I've never used WeakAuras before but if you could post the strings here I would really appreciate it. I also tried CLC but found it to be too distracting and I think it also sometimes showed me wrong things to press when two spells were coming off cooldown almost at the exact same time. That might have happened because I didn't set it up perfectly but in any case I won't be using it now.

But you still can make decisions on the spot, like "Inq is at 2 sec, yes, reapply Inq" or "Inq is at 5 sec, having 5HP or under HA, no, don't reapply Inq now, even if Clc says so"..
I still use clcret (not clcinfo) and still use Power Auras Classic with a counters (not bars) for Inq, GoAK (so damn useful in Cata) etc. It would take waay too much time to rearrange everything in clcinfo (and the ret pack in the clcinfo is just so god damn overkill and ugly for my taste) or Weak Auras (who the hell can understand that hash-like import string??)..

You don't have to 'understand' the import string, you just copy it and click import... Weakauras can do everything powerauras can do. There are some cases where its harder to figure out HOW to do it, but its really just a better addon in nearly every way imaginable.

Yes you can ignore CLCinfo, but if you're actually tracking inq time and which abilities are ready, why bother using CLC in the first place. imo clc's purpose is so you only have to look at one thing to know what to do. If you're looking at all that information and able to understand it anyway, CLC isn't doing anything for you.

---------- Post added 2013-04-03 at 07:01 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Orochiro

That actually looks very nice and I like it a lot more than my current setup. I've never used WeakAuras before but if you could post the strings here I would really appreciate it. I also tried CLC but found it to be too distracting and I think it also sometimes showed me wrong things to press when two spells were coming off cooldown almost at the exact same time. That might have happened because I didn't set it up perfectly but in any case I won't be using it now.

Sure, I'll post the strings when I get home (hopefully I won't be at work as long as I was yesterday). Definitely take a minute to play around with weakauras - you can get by importing other people's stuff but its really nice to be able to make your own on the fly, and its not hard once you grasp the basic concepts. Display is how it looks, Trigger is what makes it show up, Load is more conditionals for it to load (or not load), Animations are ways to manipulate the aura once its there (like making it pulse etc). For most purposes all you care about are display and trigger.

One of the things that annoyed me about CLC was that it didn't account for range; if CS was up it'd show me CS even though I was out of melee range and had to judge. Not that its all that hard to figure out yourself, but I'd occasionally lose a half second here or there of dps.

Anyway yea I'll post the strings later today :P

Edit: I'm home but really tired and going to take a nap, just updating to say I didn't forget!

Back again folks. Just wondering where I can improve now that I got some new gear and became more familiar and comfortable with the spec. I feel like I am on the cusp of doing better dps but I am unsure if it is gear related or user related.

Back again folks. Just wondering where I can improve now that I got some new gear and became more familiar and comfortable with the spec. I feel like I am on the cusp of doing better dps but I am unsure if it is gear related or user related.

Anywho, you're 2.11% over hit. Looks like you've reforged off hit everywhere you can, so it might just be gear that's holding you back some. That's a lot of wasted secondary stats. The sword + having a lot of gear with crit on it probably adds to that as well. Just my opinion.

Yeah with all the hit gear I'm bleeding hit all over the place and getting rid of it as much as I can.

You should have passed on the glove token (maybe nobody wanted it ?) since it is our off-set piece. Equip it only to gain 2pc temporarily but I guess you don't have a choice and don't have better gloves :/.

Your gear is really low on haste, high on crit/hit so yeah, your gear, despite the ilvl, is keeping you behind.

244HP generated; -54 for your inq that would leave 190 HP so 63 TV. But I only see 49. Do you often overcap HP ? Since you didn't cast any WoG (which is good for your DPS ^^). If that's the case, then try to avoid at all cost to cast HP generator when you are at 5HPs. This feeling is confirmed by the fact your melee is before TV on damage by spell rankings.

Also, your second usage of Guardian was a bit of a waste. Try to align it with your next AW and 2nd potion, as well as the most of your STR proc! (synapses, unwavering Might) it will be much more effecient since the main interest of the CD is the 20%str it gives you, not the melee hits of the pet .

Try to get those delicious crafted boots. I know they can be expensive, but your guild might be able to provide the spirits.

Our Guild is currently stuck on Horridon 10m and we have a few DPS who are unable to pull 90k+ and we are working with them. I am here for our Ret paladin. If I can get some pro paladins to audit his logs and let me know what he is doing wrong would be great!

Our Guild is currently stuck on Horridon 10m and we have a few DPS who are unable to pull 90k+ and we are working with them. I am here for our Ret paladin. If I can get some pro paladins to audit his logs and let me know what he is doing wrong would be great!

Now, from a cursory glace at his setup, he's over on hit cap by a considerable amount, is using the Inq glyph which is a straight DPS loss, obvious stuff like missing gems/enchants.

As for his logs, I'm only going to look at your best attempt on Horri (Try 6, 7:10 duration), he has one cast of Light's Hammer (1minute CD) across a 7 minute fight, had 2 uses of HA and 3 uses of AW, even though they have the same cooldown, and he could have gotten 4 of each in the time the fight lasted. He has only 123 HP gained over the course of the fight, giving him an average of 1 HP gained every ~3.5 seconds (this is bad), Inq uptime extremely low, even with the aforementioned glyph (increases duration, decreases effect).